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Mary Buck

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids. You can browse the book matches here.

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich: "Watch out, world. Here comes Stephanie Plum, a bounty hunter with attitude. In Stephanie's opinion, toxic waste, rabid drivers, armed schizophrenics, and August heat, humidity, and hydrocarbons are all part of the great adventure of living in Jersey.She's a product of the "burg," a blue-collar pocket of Trenton where houses are attached and narrow, cars are American, windows are clean, and (God forbid you should be late) dinner is served at six.Now Stephanie's all grown up and out on her own, living five miles from Mom and Dad's, doing her best to sever the world's longest umbilical cord. Her mother is a meddler, and her grandmother is a few cans short of a case.Out of work and out of money, with her Miata repossessed and her refrigerator empty, Stephanie blackmails her bail bondsman cousin, Vinnie, into giving her a try as an apprehension agent. Stephanie knows zilch about the job requirements, but she figures her new pal, fearless bounty hunter Ranger, can teach her what it takes to catch a crook.Her first assignment: nail Joe Morelli, a former vice cop on the run from a charge of murder one."

If you like Janet Evanovich's character Stephanie Plum and want some other book suggestions with plucky, smart mouthed gals, have we got some suggestions for you! All of these characters are the type you just KNOW you could be good friends to bond with over pizza and beer!

Most of these titles are parts of a series. To see the titles in series order, you might want to check out "What's Next," a database maintained by the Kent District Library in Michigan. This is a wonderful and easy to use way to find out the exact order for series. Go to http://www.kdl.org and click on the "What's Next" link.

A is For Alibi by Sue Grafton
Sue Grafton's "alphabet" mysteries featuring P.I. Kinsey Millhone are popular favorites. Kinsey is woman you'd like to know.

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by M. C. Beaton
Agatha Raisin is a middle-aged businesswoman who decides to chuck it all and move to a cottage in the Cotswolds. She finds that a bucolic life in the English coutnryside is not her style, but luckily a murder stirs things up in the village.

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids. You can browse the book matches here.

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb: "'Mine is a story of craving: an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered....' Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallmomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance beforereallygoing belly up.In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. At once a fragile girl and a hard-edged cynic, so tough to love yet so inimitably lovable, Dolores is as poignantly real as our own imperfections." (Book Summary)

If you liked "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb, you may enjoy these titles:

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
"Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family-rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious-until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back."-catalog summary

Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen.
Fran is on the run from the husband who loves her - and beats her.

Research any field – from Business to Education to the Humanities to the Sciences – with the JSTOR database’s access to more than a thousand scholarly journals and over 1 million images, letters, and other primary sources. JSTOR is accessible within the library and remotely from the Articles & Databases page.

This database is an archive, so issues from the past 2-3 years are not included for most titles. All journals are indexed back to the first issue. For instance, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography goes back to volume 1, Issue 1 from July 1893. Some of the primary sources, such as pamphlets and personal collections, have content going back to the 1600s! The Cowen Tracts, containing the pamphlet collection of British Member of Parliament Joseph Cowen, goes back to 1603.

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.

Terry Goodkind is a popular fantasy writer who wrote the bestselling series, The Sword of Truth. This is the story of "Richard Cypher, a modest woodsman in a world achingly beautiful, alive with the joys of nature: a world the reader comes to love as fiercely as do Richard and those around him. Though a mere woodsman, he is the one destined to battle the ultimate adversary - Darken Rahl, an evil mage who bids to destroy all that Richard holds good and beautiful, dooming him and the rest of the people of Westland to a living Hell of subjugation and degradation." (Goodreads)

If you like books by Terry Goodkind, you may also like these:

Celtika by Robert Holdstock
Centuries before he meets Arthur, Merlin wanders the earth, eternally young, a traveler on the path of magic and learning. During his journeys he encounters Jason, and joins his search for the Golden Fleece. It is a decision that will cost him dear... Hundreds of years later, Merlin hears of a screaming ship in a northern lake, and divines that it is the
Argo ... that Jason still screams out for his sons, stolen by the enchantress Medea and thought dead."-catalog summary

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
This book starts a series that offers satisfying characters and lots of action. "Betrayed by an unknown enemy into slavery, former soldier and courtier Lupe dy Cazaril escapes his bondage and returns to the royal household he once served. Entrusted with the teaching of the sister to the heir to the throne of Chalion, Cazaril finds himself drawn into a
tangled web of politics and dark magic as he battles a curse that threatens the lives and souls of a family he has come to love." (Library Journal)

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.

Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout "follows a recent widower from grief through breakdown to recovery in 1959 smalltown Maine. The father of two young girls and the newly appointed minister of the fictional town of West Annett, Tyler Caskey is quietly devastated by wife Lauren's death following a prolonged illness. Tyler's older daughter Katherine is deeply antisocial at school and at home; his adorable younger daughter Jeannie has been sent to live upstate with Tyler's overbearing mother. Talk begins to spread of Katherine's increasing unsoundness and of Tyler's possible affair with his devoted-though-suspicious housekeeper, Connie Hatch. It's spearheaded by the gossipy Ladies' Aide Society, whose members bear down on Tyler like the dark clouds of a gathering storm. Meanwhile, Tyler's grief shades into an angry, cynical depression, leaving him unable to parent his troubled daughter or minister to his congregation, and putting his job and family at risk." (Publisher's Weekly)

If you enjoyed the well-written characters of Elizabeth Strout's "Abide with Me", you may enjoy these titles:

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
"The idyllic lives of civic-minded environmentalists Patty and Walter Berglund come into question when their son moves in with aggressive Republican neighbors, green lawyer Walter takes a job in the coal industry, and go-getter Patty becomes increasingly unstable and enraged."-catalog summary

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
"In 1956, as a minister approaches the end of his life, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets."-catalog summary

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory is about: "Two sisters competing for the greatest prize: the love of a king. When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family's ambitious plots as the king's interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king, and take her fate into her own hands." (Book Summary).

If you like The Other Boleyn Girl and historical fiction about royalty that explores the details of court life, you may enjoy these selections:

The Creation of Eve
by Lynn Cullen
Renaissance portraitist Sofonisba Anguissola joins the Spanish court of Felipe II after a scandal in her native Italy and becomes embroiled in a love triangle involving the royal couple and the king's illegitimate half-brother, Don Juan. (catalog summary)

Crowner Royal
by Bernard Knight
It is April 1196. At the command of King Richard and his Chief Justiciar Hubert Walter, county coroner Sir John de Wolfe -- along with his officer Gwyn of Polruan and clerk Thomas de Peyne -- has left Exeter for London where he is to become the first Coroner of the Verge. Thrust into the intrigues of the closed world of the Royal Court, John quickly finds himself embroiled in a case of theft, blackmail, espionage, and murder. (catalog summary)

Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson is about: "Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a hurricane could damage the city of Galveston, Texas, where he was based was to him preposterous. It is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets nature's last uncontrollable force, based on Cline's own letters, telegrams, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the hows and whys of great storms."

If you liked "Isaac's Storm" by Erik Larson, you may enjoy these books:

The Great Hurricane: 1938
by Cherie Burns
"On the night of September 21, 1938, news on the radio was full of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. There was no mention of severe weather. By the time oceanfront residents noticed an ominous yellow color in the sky, it was too late. In a matter of hours, a massive hurricane of unprecedented force ripped its way from Long Island to Providence, obliterating coastal communities, destroying whole commercial fishing fleets from Montauk to Narragansett Bay, and killing seven hundred people. Early that morning, old-salt fishermen heading out on calm seas noticed a sudden drop in the barometer, which made some turn back.
Hurling toward them at a record speed was a powerful hurricane--the big cat stalking the coast was ready to strike. It struck Long Island with the tide at an all-time high under a full, equinox moon. The sea rose out of its shores like a demon, with catastrophic waves surging over fifty feet. Winds whipped up to 186 miles per hour, trashing boats and smashing homes from Long Island to Connecticut and Rhode Island. Most victims never knew what hit them. Flowing through "The Great Hurricane: 1938 are personal stories of those like the Moore family who were sucked to sea clinging to a raft formerly their attic floor. Like "The Perfect Storm, Burns's masterful storytelling follows the storm's punishing path in a seamless and suspenseful narrative, preserving for posterity the legendary story of the Great Hurricane."--catalog summary

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.

If you liked "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, you might enjoy these other titles that also offer lots of plot twists and turns and a sprinkling of history:

Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
This book is set in the Sri Lankan Civil War of the 1980s and 1990s. Anil Tissera is a native Sri Lankan who left her home at 18 and returned 15 years later as a forensic anthropologist working with an international human rights fact-finding mission. Although she had done similar work digging up victims of the killing squads in the Guatemalan Civil War, Anil finds that the work is quite different when it is in her own country.

Atonement by Ian McEwan
Set in 1935 England at the dysfunctional country estate of the Tallis family, it is the story of love, loss, and lies. Thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis lets her formidable imagination and creative talent wander in the wrong direction and must later live with her guilt and attempt to atone for her sins. Plenty of World War II history. Also excellent on audio book.

Supporting the Friends of the Library at the Porter Branch is as easy as buying a used book, savoring a soda, or eating a bag of chips! The Central Rappahannock Regional Library Friends of the Library is pleased to announce the opening of the Porter Café and Books.

The café is adjacent to the check out desk and is open Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.